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Events

• November 28 – At Gresham College in London, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins and Robert Moray, meet after a lecture by Wren and resolve to found "a College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning", which will become the Royal Society.¹

Botany

• John Ray publishes Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium in Cambridge, the first flora of an English county.²

Mathematics

• The popular English-language edition by Isaac Barrow of Euclid's Elements is published in London.

Physics

• Robert Boyle publishes New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (the second edition in 1662 will contain Boyle's law).
• Robert Hooke conceives Hooke's law (but does not publish it in full until 1678).³

Zoology

• Jan Goedart begins publication of Metamorphosis Naturalis in Middelburg, Zeeland, containing detailed illustrated descriptions of insect metamorphosis.⁴

Births

• February 19 – Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist (died 1742)
• April 16 – Hans Sloane, Ulster Scots-born collector and physician (died 1753)
• March 15 – Olof Rudbeck the Younger, Swedish naturalist (died 1740)
• May 27 (bapt.) – Francis Hauksbee, English scientific instrument maker and experimentalist (died 1713)
• approx. date – Edward Lhuyd, Welsh naturalist (died 1709)
• Date unknown – Jeanne Dumée, French astronomer (born 1660)

Deaths

• May 29 – Frans van Schooten, Dutch Cartesian mathematician (born 1615)
• June 30 – William Oughtred, English mathematician who invented the slide rule (born 1574)
• Jean-Jacques Chifflet, French physician and antiquary (born 1588)
• Walter Rumsey, Welsh judge and amateur scientist (born 1584)

References

1. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0. 0-14-102715-0 ↩

2. Egerton, Frank N. (October 2005). "A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 18: John Ray and His Associates Francis Willughby and William Derham" (PDF). Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America: 301–313. http://www.esapubs.org/bulletin/current/history_list/history18.pdf ↩

3. Hooke, Robert (1678). Lectures De Potentia Restitutiva, or of Spring. Explaining the Power of Springing Bodies. London: The Royal Society. https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_lectures-de-potentia-res_hooke-robert_1678 ↩

4. Beaart, Kees, ed. (2016). Johannes Goedaert: Fijnschilder en entomoloog (in Dutch). [Middelburg]: Nehalennia. ISBN 978-90-805985-6-0. 978-90-805985-6-0 ↩